This beautifully playful show is utterly fabulous and is topped off by the splendid guest slot provided by the very talented Tim Wells.
The fantastically written pieces tackle a wide range of topics poignantly in some places and with belting punch lines in others.
And of course, the delivery is the perfect accompaniment to the poetry.

Tim Wells, is a superb poet. The imagery, life, warmth and colour is very apparent, all shot through with brilliant humour.
No matter what the length of the poem or the subject, he leaves his audience enthralled.
I’d say as close to a perfect guest slot for the show as one could get.

Between the passion of the performances and the gorgeousness of the work, lies a show that if missed, would leave your Fringe incomplete.

Peter Brush is not your ordinary comedian and his show, Dreams with Advert Breaks, is not your typical comedy show.

Peter’s show is all about dreams – more specifically, his dreams, and whether, looking back, he is getting his dreams and his memories confused with one another. With this premise, he sets off on an hour of playing around with some delightfully silly ideas, well-crafted and well-landed jokes that take in everything from being in the womb to playing rock-paper-sciccors.

He uses the room to his advantage too, making the very best use out of the intimate nature of the space to engage with the audience on a more personal level. He was once described in another review as not looking ‘like he’s meant to be on the stage’, something which, again he uses to his advantage. (By the way, we disagree with this!)

Peter’s is a well-rehearsed performance. What we particularly admired was the ending of the show, which brought back all those flights of fancy he takes the audience on and ties everything together. This is a deeply imaginative show about how we should embrace our imaginative side and is very funny indeed.

Dreams with Advert Breaks was on in The Banshee Labyrinth at 1310 as part of the PBH Free Fringe.

From the very start – not just the start of the set but from walking in to the room – it is clear that this will be a show of comedy with a difference.

Hello, Goodbye is a tale of love and death that takes in everything from Beatrix Potter to Van Morrison with a surreal look at what motivates us moving forward in life.

Joz is a very confident and charming performer. His work with the audience – involving them with the show and drawing them in to his wonderfully imaginative world – is first class. He makes brilliant use of props and music to craft his story and plays around with different forms of comedy to create a layered and unexpected narrative.

It was wonderful to see his subversion of these comedic forms – his subversion of character and improv comedy were very well thought out.

His dedication to the craft is admirable and he really does have a massive future ahead of him.

Hello, Goodbye was on at The Hive at 1840 as part of the Heroes model.

Straight from the top of the show, it is clear that Dave Chawner is a confident performer who brings a great deal of cheek and charm to the stage.

This cheek and charm are deployed to fantastic effect whilst dealing with some very sensitive issues – this show is the story of Dave’s circumcision at the start of this year. As the story unfolds, the audience are taken on a journey through mental health issues and eating disorders, all of which are dealt with with the utmost respect and sensitivity. It is clear that Dave knows how to put an audience at ease with excellent delivery.

He even talks about sex in a way that had us in stitches but without being overtly graphic – for the most part – which is a very difficult skill to master.

The entire show had a great rhythm and flow, moving through the narrative with a natural pace that allowed the story to build momentum. There was a very clear message to take from the show, an uplifting message which we will not spoil here but we left knowing we had seen something brilliant from one of the loveliest people we met in Edinburgh.

One really nice thing we have found at the Edinburgh Fringe in the last few years is that spoken word is taking more of a centre stage. As much as we love comedy here at Bunbury, we do also love a finely-crafted hour of spoken word.

Garibaldi, in our opinion, straddles both comedy and spoken word in a very clever way.

After some startling statistics on the decline of The Gary, Gary From Leeds spends the next hour performing sharply-written poems in an attempt to ‘Save Gary.’ He references everything from the Andrex Puppies to Giuseppe Garibaldi himself whilst taking the audience on an extraordinary journey through his words.

Gary makes brilliant use of props throughout the show as well – the palm reading is a stroke of genius (we won’t give it away!) as well as utilising music very effectively. One of the highlights is a poem so bereft of hope yet set to the ‘second jauntiest TV theme of all time’ (again, we won’t give it away) that, yes Gary, it did leave the audience with a net depression. And we loved it.

Christopher here. We’re trying to plan a wedding at the moment and in the choas of trying to organise wedding invitations, I completely forgot about the start of National Poetry Writing Month. I remembered today so here is the first post in catching up with the first three days before attempting to do it like a sensible person.

So, it has been a little while since I have done this. In fact, I think it is fair to say that I have failed the challenge of writing a poem every day this year, given I haven’t done one since the end of July. I knew it was ambitious and I over-stretched myself but I am glad I tried it. I think out of the 100-200 poems I did write in that time frame – I was writing more than one a day at one point – I maybe have about 3 or 4 that I can actually work in to something which is a success of sorts.

I actually started doing this challenge in January because I was in the midst of a depression, I had not written anything for months and wanted an exercise to get me just doing something, anything again. Getting some words down. That is something I achieved whilst doing this from the start of the year to July. I did write some things. I managed to get myself out of the depression too. I came off the antidepressants and things started looking up.

It has not been plain sailing of course, nothing is. I am still fighting my depression on a daily basis. I have just had to take a new job in a call centre of all places because my previous job were a horde of succubi. Since the start of the year though, we have released 3 really strong issues and have another one we are just about to start editing. I finally obtained my degree, after seven long years and we have started planning our wedding. That’s right, the very beautiful Keri and I are shackling to each other next year, on my 30th birthday until the day we are either raptured or eaten by raptors. those are the only two logical endings as far as I can see.

We also spent an incredible (almost) week up in Edinburgh for the Fringe festival where we saw some incredible shows, made some brilliant friends and had a few cheeky beers on the way. Not too many. Have you seen the cost of a pint up there? We’re not collectively Rockefeller!

Anyway, enough of the amble, pre or otherwise. I’m back with a poem. Since the start of July, I have not really written much and after 8 hours today of being called a cunt on the phone, I do not really have much in my head but I am going to force myself to write something to kick this off again because writing is too important. I would also be a fool if I did not chose today, National Poetry Day, to actually write some verse!